Open Source In Public Sector Meeting Opposition 425
Open Source movements have been gaining popularity everywhere, but not everyone is happy about that. Johans wrote to mention a ZDNet Asia story discussing a controversy within the Malaysian computer industry over the government's 'Public Sector Open Source Software Masterplan. From the article: " ... the government has stated that its first choice in IT procurement are infocomm technology solutions developed on the open-source platform. It states that 'in situations where advantages and disadvantages of open-source software (OSS) and proprietary software are equal, preference shall be given to OSS' ... However, some industry consortiums have stepped out to voice their concerns over this policy." Meanwhile, Anonymous Coward wrote to mention a Fox News article entitled 'Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument', calling the attention of journalists to the 'huge mistake' that Massachusetts is making by switching to OpenDocument. From that article: "Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats. Such a policy might seem like something that should concern only a small group of technology professionals, but in fact the implications are staggering and far-reaching. The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to disrupt how state agencies interact with citizens, businesses and organizations."
Blind knee jerk self-defence reactions.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that the main point of an open format document? To make it easier for the involved parties to interact!
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course microssoft and friends are upset, office is there big cash cow, and if Mass pulls this off and saves some money, then there is every possibility more states will follow.
Two options (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Lock yourself more tightly into vendor-owned file formats and either keep paying the vendor-tax forever or make a far more troublesome and expensive switch to an open file format later.
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the same impression I got when reading this article. For example:
In a letter to Governor Mitt Romney about the policy, Citizens Against Government Waste righlty (sic) pointed out that, "Not only will this mandate undermine free market competition and drive up costs, it will also curtail the ability of the people and government of Massachusetts to benefit from future innovation."
Rightly? I think the issue is far from settled. I'd argue that encouraging the use of a common standard would enable competition, by preventing lock-in to a specific vendor. But hey, there I go refusing to look at things in the same short-sighted way as the reporter...
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Free market? Do these people even read their own bullshit any more? The OS marketplace and document 'standard' are owned by one convincted monopolist the current administration let off the hook. What free market? It's a meaningless boogeyman term these nitwits spout nowadays by reflex, much like "save the children" and "burn the witches".
Lies! (Score:3, Insightful)
"In other cases, the OpenDocument solution may cost more and provide less, but agencies and citizens will have to pay the price and make do."
Yup, definatley costs more, being free and all.
"It may be that an array of exceptional, low-cost OpenDocument applications will emerge in the coming years."
*Ahem*... http://www.openoffice.org/ [openoffice.org]
That's about as low-cost as they come.
"Many technology writers, in fact, have cast a skeptical eye on OpenDocument and applications that support the format. George Ou, writing on ZDNet, recently compared the new Open Office Calc product to Microsoft Excel and found it lacking, writing, "[i]f someone from Open Office can explain why it takes more than 100 times longer to create and load spreadsheet documents and why it uses up several more times memory that Microsoft Excel to work with the same data, I'd love to hear it.""
So, OpenOffice Calc isn't as good as Microsoft Excel, and therefore the OpenDocument standard is no good...
One more.
"Until now, Massachusetts' citizens and government agencies have been well served by a competitive, merit-based procurement process for technology services."
And they still could be. He forgets to mention that the OpenDocument format is in fact open and therefore anyone can support it. Microsoft could make a product that competes here just as easily as anyone else (or more easily, considering the money they have to throw around).
I could go on and on. The entire article is horrid, anti-open source propaganda.
Malaysian Microsoft Shills Involved (Score:1, Insightful)
Uh. this is an OPINION article!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Theres nothing wrong with an opinion article saying that he is against the switch to open source formats (he makes a few valid points - the exception of Adobe Acrobat products and the fact that OO Calc does truly suck).
-everphilski-
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making.
*cough* Excuse me?
How difficult is it for MS to just... (Score:5, Insightful)
The article mentions ease of interoperability, claiming that everyone should use Microsoft Office since everyone else uses Microsoft Office.
THAT'S NOT INTEROPERABILITY! That's a monopoly! Microsoft is well aware of that fact, too, which is why they DON'T want to support OpenDocument. If they did, then people would be able to choose a different office suite and still be able to maintain working relations with others. Suddenly everyone has choice, and that's a bad thing!
Maybe this is just the spark needed to light a fire under MS's ass. Either they or the state of Massachusetts is going to have to crack, and I'm betting they will. It's trivial to add OpenDocument support to MS Office. Of course, once they do, they'll open the floodgates to personal choice... so maybe they'll bite the bullet and wait out Mass.
Disclaimer: I'm not an anti-MS zealot. I merely go with what is in my opinion the best tool for the job. I run Windows XP, Firefox and OpenOffice.org.
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:5, Insightful)
People keep focussing on the problems with OO.o vrs Office, including a totally irrelevent dig at Calc (that doesn't match my experience - at my last job I downloaded and used Calc to data munge some Excel spreadsheets because Excel would lock up for 5 seconds every time I opened or closed the "find" dialog. Nice)
There's plenty thats just plain wrong, too. PDF *is* an open, documented standard with, as far as I know, no patent issues preventing outside implementations. Notably, non-Adobe PDF implementations don't have to rely on difficult and time consuming reverse engineering to interoperate.
And he claims that, up till now, bidding on technologies has been open and merit based.... but he thinks that they should mandate Office. Right. Thats right from the mothership - "Cross platform means NT *AND* 98!". You can implement any "merit based" technology you want, as long as it Microsoft based.
God. So much lying.
The More The Merrier (Score:3, Insightful)
It's encumbent upon most governments to adopt standards that are readily available and open to their constituents. I suspect their might be legal principles at play that would allow suits to be launched forcing governments and their agencies to adopt Open Standards and, hopefully, Open Source.
Closed source proprietory software developers are right to fear what's happening in Mass. and elsewhere around the globe. It's the tip of the iceberg and closed source is booked on the Titanic.
Re:Open Source is BAD! M'Kay?! (Score:3, Insightful)
In response, to Mr. Pendergast's comments, I would ask under what conditions Calc takes more than 100 times longer to create and load spreadsheets? What version of OpenOffice is he using? I've used Calc many times and actually found it easier for what I like to do, and noticed no discernable difference.
What I have noticed, though, is sometimes the system takes a little longer to load on my Windows system if I don't have the quick loader running. But then, I have a sneaking suspicion that MS Office is using elements of the Explorer shell to run. (I remember an IE 6.0 requirement long ago.) If that's the case, well, then again, it's been optimised to run on the system. But, again, that's proprietary use, and more Microsoft monopoly speaking than anything else.
As noted before, OpenDocument is an XML standard. Touting XML doesn't reall say much about features. And just because Microsoft's XML may validate, it doesn't mean it's well-written XML.
The worst part about this article isn't that it's supporting Microsoft against OpenDocument... The worst part is that it includes allegations, without supporting reference, and is mostly an op-ed piece, posing as news.
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:2, Insightful)
No, this is actually an example of the free market in action: Microsoft produces a product, and that product's features don't fit the needs of a potential customer, so they're buying from other vendors.
Microsoft is free to either alter their product to meet this customer's requirements, drop the price enough to change the requirements calculation, or forego that customer's business. This is no different than options for producers of any other product in any market.
If I said: "I'm going to buy a vehicle. I need a minivan, so I won't be buying a Ferrari given their current offerings.", would anybody accuse me of attempting to "Undermine the Free Market!!!" or yell "You'll destroy sports car innovation!!!"?
Re:Wake up call (Score:3, Insightful)
Article makes a few good points... (Score:4, Insightful)
The author is 100% right on when he raises the concerns of increased costs, major implemention headaches, a reduction in the quality of the products. This is part of a major shift in technology. It's not abnormal. Mass. is gambling on the fact that they're political objectives and strategy to reduce a single vendor tie-in will payoff in the long run with increased competition, and better tools. Gambling is the right word here because they are going to have to pay serious premium to build new tools, integrate those tools, support those tools, and train their people on the new tools without any gaurantee that the market will respond in a significant way to justify the expense. I think in 18 to 24 months we will be hearing about major reductions in the scope of this initiative or a complete abandonment of the policy. The costs are gauranteeed, I don't think the politicians have the stomach to actually run that much risk for that much time for something that most people could care less about (even if there is real value).
Re:Fox News! (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you genuinely believe that the current crop of news options on TV is completely representative of the viewpoints? If you answered yes, then you can stop reading.
If you answered no, my guess is that you're sophisticated enough to understand that while you may disagree with Fox, they represent a significant portion of the populace. The news options that we have avialable today aren't all inclusive, and generally tend to cluster around one story.
The fact that there are other options is a good thing. And yes, even though they often make fools of themselves at Fox news, they also stumble onto a story every once in a while.
Suggesting that they are worthless as a news source is the worst kind of intellectual elitism, the kind that says if I disagree with you you're wrong.
Whether you like it or not, even a blind squirrel can find a nut every now and then.
PS, no I don't take them seriously as a news source, but that's a TV thing, not a Fox thing. I tend to believe information is valuable in any form, even if only to give insight into what others are thinking.
Re:How difficult is it for MS to just... (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably not very difficult.
Except for the fact that this could allow people export existing documents to the OpenDocument format and in turn move over to StarOffice/OpenOffice to save money.
At the end of the day Microsoft is just being petty! If StarOffice/OpenOffice is so difficult/expensive/crap/slow etc.. then what do they have to worry about? Is Office better than all the offerings or not?
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely no one is stopping them.
This flake is arguing that they're shouldn't be only one document format that government uses because there should be only one document format that the government uses, just not the one they picked.
Re:OSS is more free market (Score:3, Insightful)
Any increase or extention of copyright or patent rights is effectively comparable to raising VAT or similar taxation and giving the money to corporate interests. With the difference, of course, that there's little democratic control or accountability.
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:5, Insightful)
And hes quoting an article by Citizens Against Government Waste [sourcewatch.org] who are also a lobby group with close ties to Microsoft.
They are recyciling each other's crap.
One problem with your argument is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, OO writes out to that format- but OpenDocument is an open specification that not only all the main FOSS office suites either already support it or are in the final stages of supporting it- and the other Office Suites of mention other than MS Office are in the same situation. MS is the only one that's not on the same page.
Furthermore, for most people's Office suite needs, they do not need MS Office's functionalities. It might be a cherished notion that you need MS Office- but for the large part, most people aren't making dynamic documents, those very documents have absolutely no business whatsoever in Government in the first place, and the very issues that make MS Office documents very problematic in the first place are due to those "advanced features".
Re:it's worse then that (Score:2, Insightful)
All news outlets slant the truth. Why is this concept so difficult for people to get?
By your standard, every news outlet that has ever done any story that wasn't completely factual is evil.
Or is your point that SOME lying is ok, but Fox just lies too much for your delicate sensibilities?
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly right. The free market drives prices down to marginal costs. With software, the marginal cost is zero. This causes some people to see socialist conspiracies in the free software movement, when it's actually capitalism doing what it's supposed to.
Those POOR TAXPAYERS! (Score:4, Insightful)
How terrible!
But what about the poor taxpayers who have paid so much tax that they can't afford to buy the latest version of Microsoft office?
Is mr Prendergast suggesting that an IT Dark Ages is the way forward?
"Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making." -- James Prendergast
Competition?
Microsoft has always killed off that and, now that something new has struggled to get its head above the water, Mr Prendergast would like to see new competition killed off?
Innovation?
If it wasn't for the competition that Microsoft faces there would be no innovation - such as the bleak times of Windows 98 (that great and innovative successor of Windows 95).
If Microsoft was to add Open Document support to Microsoft Office there would be no problem. The question is: is Microsoft going to support this or is Microsoft going to attempt to maintain its anti-competitive monopoly?
If it costs so much for people to switch to an alternative there shall never be any competition in the Office Suite area; everybody would be forced to stick with Microsoft's proprietary formats. Is this fair?
Re:Arrange for a Government competition for format (Score:3, Insightful)
OS-neutrality is NOT a good argument to stick with MS formats.
Really. Seriously.
Also:
What I think is needed, and what I have proposed to the Norwegian Government, is that the government, together with the EU, hold a public competition where anyone can submit their contributions to an open document format. This also gives Microsoft an option to contribute. However, the stakes are also very high for Microsoft, because the winning format will be made mandatory for use throughout the public sector of the EU.
This has already been done. Microsoft is a member of OASIS. The EU has specifically encouraged MS to contribute whatever they would like to see in a document format to OASIS. Furthermore, the OASIS format is an open format.
I don't know about the format being that immature for spreadsheets-- OpenOffice.org Calc is not so bad.
And, how can you compare that to WordML and ExcelML? They have 0 real world testing.
If governments adopt open formats, app writers will support them. If the EU specifics OpenDocument, iWork will follow soon.
It's painful, but sticking with MS proprietary stuff is NOT the answer to platform neutrality.
You might be happier if the new Office XML formats become the standard. But that excludes us Linux users indefinitly. We don't get MS Office for Linux.
Better to make a switch to a *real* open standard, and fix the problem of no standards based apps for the Mac platform, than stick with the monopoly supported vendor standard.
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better; how do you open a document created in MS Office 95? Government documents often need to be kept around for decades, even centuries, and yet MS doesn't even provide a way to open a
The citizens will be inconvenienced either way, that's just a simple, unavoidable fact. But, at least with OpenDocument it won't cost them any money.
Not content to either do what it takes to win fairly or lose gracefully, they instead use the same tactics they accuse Microsoft of and engage in the holy effrontery of the self-righteous.
Sorry, but turn-about IS fair play. And anyway, what makes you say that the FOSS people have engaged in MS tactics? Who did they pay off? What special, one time only discounts did they offer? How many jobs did they threaten to move to another state? Which competing formats did they buy up and strangle?
All I see here is a state government that's actually considering the long-term effects of their IT policy, and making a perfectly rational decision. Perhaps you'd like to try and convince me otherwise?
Re:Arrange for a Government competition for format (Score:2, Insightful)
I think that radical measures should be used, and an open competition by the EU is one means of facilitating that. The outcome would be an open format spesification that anyone could implement regardless of operating system. A format -- or rather a set of formats being able to handle media, spreadsheets, drawings, presentations and so on.
I also think we have to remember that for any open format selected, it will be dead easy for Microsoft to write filters or plug-ins that read and write the open formats.
Re:Pendergast is a lobbyist. (Score:3, Insightful)
It should also be noted that no one is forcing Microsoft to do anything. Microsoft is free to continue using proprietary formats. The Massachusetts government, for example, has simply stated that all document application software must support the open standard thereby increasing the availability of important documents and freeing themselves of their servitude to Microsoft. If Microsoft were to provide the functionality to work with open standard documents (say through one of their many and frequent updates), I see no reason why that government might continue to use their products. As long as the functionality was complete, that would actually probably be a better decision since all the government employees are familiar with that software.